By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
YACHATS – A smoldering concern about fire hydrants in Yachats and whether they are plentiful enough and in working order has ignited a conversation between the city and fire officials.
The subject, which had been on the minds of Yachats Rural Fire Protection District staff for several years, flamed in the past few months during its board meetings and quickly spread in the wake of the fires in southern California.
Yachats’ Public Works & Street Commission board member Don Phipps sparked the conversation during the commission’s monthly meeting Tuesday after attending a fire board meeting Monday.
“A lot of this had been generated because of what’s happened in Los Angeles,” Phipps began before emphasizing that while there’s only so much that can be done to prepare for a massive tsunami, fires can be somewhat mitigated.
He then recalled the fatal 1936 Bandon Fire that destroyed the town’s commercial district and hundreds of homes after starting in a patch of gorse plant east of city.
“So it’s not unheard of for a city to suddenly be swamped by fire,” Phipps said. “And I was thinking, as we talk about the hydrants, that it’s very good to see the city doing this hydrant infrastructure check, making sure that the hydrants are in good repair and working.”
Fire hydrant numbers, maintenance and replacement falls under the city and not the fire district’s purview. The city finished a fire hydrant inventory and tested them this week.
Wastewater treatment plant supervisor Dave Buckwald, who overseas hydrant maintenance and attended the commission meeting, told YachatsNews that five of the 73 hydrants in town need to be replaced and are covered with black bags to show they are not working.
Those hydrants are located at the top of Horizon Hill Road, the bottom of East Eighth Street, Yachats River Road at Spruce Avenue, the west end of Lemwick Lane and the north end of Elk Mountain Road.
Phipps said his hope is that the city and fire department can work together to determine where there are any gaps in coverage, if any.
“There are,” responded Yachats’ fire chief Frankie Petrick, who also attended the commission meeting. “Yes, there are gaps and part of it has to do with a change in the fire code back in 2022. For a long time, we believed that fire hydrants needed to be 1,000 feet apart.”
Before there was a city, there was a water district, Petrick explained, and they were excited when they finally had two hydrants. And then when the city began to grow hydrants were laid out in a straight line without regard to where they were needed.
“So we have some areas where it is a long distance and they exceeded a thousand feet but it was pretty close,” Petrick said. “But now the fire code says …you need to be about 400 to 500 feet to a hydrant.”
Because of that extra distance to reach some hydrants, Yachats’ Fire carries 1,200 feet of hose on its engines, she told the commission. Petrick later explained to YachatsNews that Oregon’s fire code is convoluted and distances between hydrants can vary greatly depending on a variety of factors.
“But now we need to take a hard look at — are all of the hydrants the correct size, and are there enough of them?” Petrick told the commission. “A few years ago, when there wasn’t enough (city) staff we talked a lot about how that could impact us. Now that the city has more manpower, it’s a good time to take advantage of some of that to see if we can’t get some more hydrants in places where it’s just a little slim.”
Phipps asked if Petrick could put a percentage on the gap in hydrant coverage and what would be ideal. She said she could not, but estimated that at least 75 percent of the city is “where it should be.”
But when considering land that could be divided for sale or lots that are now empty that could be developed, it is clear that hydrant replacement and additions need to begin now, she said.
And then there is the fact that hydrants take a “horrible beating on the Oregon coast,” so testing them regularly and being mindful of parts that need to be serviced or replaced is crucial. Southwest Lincoln County Water PUD, which services the area between Yachats and into south Waldport, has major issues with corrosion, she added.
Big and costly
Fire hydrants are expensive and need to be budgeted for regularly so as not to incur a backlog said both Petrick and Buckwald. The hydrants cost about $4,000 each and can cost nearly that much to install. Buckwald said he would like to see one on every corner but reiterated that it is a big expense.
Not keeping up with hydrant maintenance had been a staffing issue, Buckwald confirmed, but now that public works is fully staffed, it is being addressed. The ones that are not working will be pulled and most likely replaced. Three new hydrants are staged at the public works building awaiting instillation.
“We have a good crew right now,” Buckwald said. “But are crew needs to be trained on how to replace one. It’s a green crew. They’re learning, but we will likely contract it out and have our crew work with them to see how it’s done.”
Buckwald said the city will work directly with the fire district to determine where new hydrants should be located.
“We want to put them where they can be accessed, wherever the fire department tells us,” he said. “I think that would be the city’s driving directive. We’re not going to disregard anything they say. That might have been the people in the past. The people today, there’s not a chance in the world that if they told us that there’s a bad hydrant that we’d let it go. We’d bag it until we can get it fixed. But we’re not going to leave it out there unnoticed.”
The city’s hydrants are “dry barrel,” meaning they are not pressurized and have no water inside of them. They are controlled by a valve that once opened fills them with water that later drains when the valve is closed.
Hydrant data
Yachats Fire District board member Doug Meyers is a retired Portland-area career firefighter who splits his time between a home in Yachats and one outside of Sisters where he serves as the volunteer captain for the Sisters/Camp Sherman Fire District.
Many fire departments have a program called Active911 which they use to communicate with each other, he said. And a part of that involves maps, that once a department enters the data, show where hydrants are located and their flow level.
“You can actually also even enter water drafting spots, you can use standpipes that are less than a fire hydrant,” Meyers said. “But it’s information that your department puts in. And Yachats has put in the hydrant locations I believe, but not flow data.”
In central Oregon, Meyers said when a call comes in it shows the closest three to five water supply sources.
“It will tell you how far away and it will tell you whether it’s a fire hydrant or not,” he said. “And if they’ve color-coded it to the national standard, it will tell you roughly how much water is in there.”
As far as the fire code and the distance required between hydrants, Meyers said both Yachats and Southwest Lincoln “are actively trying to figure out what they’ve got and what they can do to improve it.”
At the close of the commission meeting, Phipps and Petrick stressed the importance of homeowners keeping brush down near their homes.
“Not a lot of people comply,” Petrick said. “We get calls every year from neighbors concerned about their neighbor’s brush being a fire danger. That continues to be a huge issue for Yachats simply because there’s just so much of that hill (above downtown) that’s not very accessible.”
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
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